Christina Massell Symons, famed geoscientist
and pilot of deep submersibles, will offer an Earth Day lecture entitled “Women
in Science: From the Seafloor to the Stars” on April 22 at William & Mary’s
Sadler Center Auditorium.

Symons, who
earned her Ph.D. from the Scripps Institute of Oceanography, will speak from
noon to 1 p.m., with a reception to follow. It is free and open to the public.

Symons will
discuss her experiences as Science Coordinator of the DEEPSEA CHALLENGE Expedition, which included the first solo descent
to the deepest place on earth - Challenger Deep in the Mariana Trench - more
than 35,700 feet below sea level.

She will
talk about her experience investigating the seafloor using submersibles, Alvin and Avalon, and her more than 200 days of research at sea mapping the
ocean floor that led her to become a member of the DEEPSEA CHALLENGE science team.

Likewise,
Symons will share what prompted her interest in science, why it opens the doors
of exploration on earth and beyond, and what led her to explore the deepest
ocean trenches and their connection to the stars.

After getting her masters from the University
of Texas, Symons joined a team studying the tectonics of the Pacific-Australian
plate boundary south of New Zealand. Later, she returned to continue the
collaboration as a postdoctoral researcher with Mobil and later Texaco. Those
summer internships stimulated a growing interest in global climate change.

Currently, Symons and a team of Scripps
Institute of Oceanography scientists are developing a digital library of
resources for Earth science education. This collaborative effort among SIO
scientists, UCSD librarians, K-12 educators and data managers is an initiative
within National Science Foundation Digital Library program.

For more information, contact Ken Kambis, kwkamb@wm.edu or (757)
221-2779.